"Fresh coloured as the day she was wed. . . . Good mornin' ma'am! Good mornin', Mrs Bosenna—an' a proper Queen o' Sheba you be, all glorious within."
"What a thing 'tis to have money!" remarked a meditative voice deep in the throng.
"Eh, Billy, my son, it cures half the ills o' life," responded another.
"'Tis a mysterious thing," hazarded a woman—"a dispensation you may call it, how black suits some complexions while others can't look at it."
"An' 'tis your sex's perversity," spoke up a male, "that them it don't suit be apt to wear it longest"—whereat several laughed, for where everybody is good-humoured the feeblest witticism will pass.
Mrs Bosenna heard these comments, but acknowledged them only by a scarcely perceptible heightening of colour. She went down the slip-way royally, with Dinah in close attendance: and Cai, catching sight of her and pocketing his watch, snatched up a boat-hook to draw the boat's quarter alongside the slip, while with his disengaged hand he lifted the brim of a new and glossy top-hat.
"Am I disgracefully late?" Without waiting for his answer, as he handed her aboard she exclaimed:
"Oh! and what a crowd of boats! . . . I never felt so nervous in all my life."
"There's no need," said Cai—who himself, two minutes before, had been desperately nervous. He seated himself beside her and took the tiller. "Push her out, port-oars! Ready?—Give way, all! . . . There's no need," he assured her, sinking his voice; "I never saw ye look a properer sight. Maybe 'tis the bunch o' ribbon sets 'ee off—'Tis the first time ye've worn colour to my recollection."
"Dead black never suited me."